1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of garage doors and in particular to inserts for garage door panels.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The top portion of garage doors have been used for decoration for many years. It is customary in the industry of garage door manufacturing to have the top portion (approximately 10 to 20%) of the upper front surface of the garage door designed with windows or decorative styles of windows. Within the area of decorative windows for garage doors, there is a significant need for an improved cost effective wrought iron looking garage door window design that looks more realistic than what is currently available. Some of the choices look flat with no depth and have no three-dimensional (3-D) appearance. This type of design lacks curb appeal and they fade from view when appearing to a person at a leading edge of a driveway. Most of the current designs are made from acrylic seeded glass and the design is sandwiched inside, thereby giving a flat overall appearance. The process involved in manufacturing this type of design is very expensive. The cost in most cases requires it to be sold at most as much as the wholesale cost of the garage door itself. High cost and not very much curb appeal are the problems with many prior art garage door inserts.
One other important part of a high curb appeal design is a realistic black frame around the design. Most of the acrylic wrought iron designs are just a sheet of plastic placed between a window or transparent sheet of material and a frame that matches the color of the garage door panel. Manufacturers do this for a few reasons because the frames on most garage doors are made of plastic. If black plastic is used, it will usually wrap, melt or distort depending on where the door is installed such as if the garage door faces the sun or if it is located in a hot climate. Even with all of the advancements in plastics, they will still distort under high heat and direct sunlight. One reason is because the frame is rigid and must be fit very tight in the door to retain the acrylic pane retainer. Black plastic needs room to expand and contract. Plastic rigid black frames will expand and contract. They expand and contract more than metal or aluminum and that is the reason they are not used. One of the other drawbacks with the acrylic pane design is that only one type of color or textured glass design can be used for each type. Most acrylic uses obscure seeded type of glass as a standard. Currently, either the simulated wrought iron design or the obscure glass design is manufactured, not both. If the customer requests glue chip glass, white laminated or a smoked, tinted glass option, it would not be available.
The reason for this is that it is not cost efficient to inventory and manufacture all the different glass types available with the wrought iron design. The inventory would be very expensive and not knowing what would sell the best or fastest would lead to unrealistic inventory costs. Too many glass pieces and too many design options are not cost effective for a dealer or manufacturer. Using real wrought iron is not a good option either. The drawbacks are the weight and high cost. Therefore, the current options are very expensive and do not provide the options and cost effective choices for homeowners, consumers, and garage door dealer distributers. Thus, there is a strong need for improvement in the field of garage doors decorative inserts.